I think the average geek here on/. is smart enough to grok the basic physics/mechanics required to build their own phonograph (or equivalent) from basic (I mean really basic) components. If all this goes through, we'll have a new cottage industry starting up.
It's all about information hiding and abstraction. Aunt Tillie shouldn't have to go to a command line to work with files. The files may really be managed that way, but this info doesn't need to be exposed to her. (Maybe the "file" concept isn't even the best one to do the work she wants done.) Of course, the geek should be able to get low-level access if he wants. The ideal system supports both.
Right now Linux is great at twiddling the individual bits that actually operate the computer, but this doesn't relate well to the average person who doesn't understand how a computer really works. They need a simple metaphor that translates how they want to do their work into how to manipulate the computer, and this is why the GUI "desktop" succeeded. KDE and Gnome are getting there. Eazel seemed like a great idea. Desktop success of Linux can happen yet, but I'm not willing to say it's a foregone conclusion.
The stupid part is that the "stuffed" instrument wasn't the only one used to test with. Another instrument indicated that the mirror may be flawed, but it was of lesser precision than the other. They went with the results of the more precise one. Too bad it was screwed up.
However, one might argue that most of our rights amount to one uber-Right To Be Free From Government Molestation In Our Personal Affairs. That amounts to about the same thing, IMO. If you were aware that gov't was monitoring (for reasons perhaps unknown) and/or recording (for reasons that could change from what you were originally told) what you spoke, where you went, who you talked to, etc, it may cause you to alter your activities. That's a restriction on those primary liberties.
I assert that it is not campain finance reform, but campain reform that we need.
I agree completely. Money is not the problem. The process is the problem.
Consider first why candidates need the huge amounts of money to be elected. They in effect need to run two entirely different campains - once for the primary, and once for the election.
There's another reason that (senatorial) candidates need huge amounts of money. Primaries serve a necessary function, and it requires cash to perform it. I have no problem with that.
Allow anybody registered to vote to vote in any primary.
Require a binding "none of the above" entry on all elections.
I disagree. First, primaries are an internal function for the parties to determine who that party's candidate will be. It should not be regulated, as it is a private function of a private organization. It's entirely fair for a party to limit participation to its own members, IMO. Second, a "none of the above" option just runs up costs as it necessitates another election. What we need to do is make sure the first election works right, in a fair way, that gives us a winner the majority actually desire. Hint: that's not the plurality vote system.
The third party candidates wouldn't run in the first race. Instead, they would encourage the voters to vote NOTA in the first race and knock the big boys out.
The big parties would no longer be able to take this "This is our guy, take it or leave it" attitude. Thus, they would tend to field more moderate candidates.
Because of 1 and 2, more people would feel their vote mattered, and we would get more turnout.
Now this is completely backwards. Why should there be only two choices? First, if five guys think they're each the best person to be president, let them all run, and give each a fair shot! Arbitrarily limiting the field to two is foolish. A fair voting system would give the third party guy a fair chance of election in the first round, instead of wasting time with a second round. Second, there's nothing wrong with a party deciding "this is our guy". If you're going to subscribe to a party because you believe its ideals, that party should pick the person who best represents those ideals to be its candidate. If you don't agree with the ideals, form your own party. The problem you pointed out (in the 2000 election) earlier was caused precisely because both of the candidates were "moderates". The electorate saw no real distinction between the two, and that's why it came down almost to a coin toss. Third, this is the same reason nobody gets out to vote. Why bother? Both the guys are moderates, and there's no distinction, so it doesn't matter.
The only way to revise the system to change voting so that the results accurately reflect voter preferences. Presently there is a false dichotomy, since your one vote can only reflect your preference between "Candidate A" over "anybody else". Since this type of voting encourages a two-way race, we focus only on the two "leading" candidates.
Voters want real choice. Since 1960, presidential election turnout has been on a steady decline - with one exception: 1992. What happened in 1992? Perot. Like him or not, he was a strong, visible, third-party candidate who made people believe they had a choice. Even though his views garnered 20% of the nation's support, we saw absolutely zero change. Why? Because the system is stacked against change.
Of course, the best way to limit government is to de-fund it. Without a ridiculously inflated budget, gov't couldn't afford to trample our lives. Why won't the IRS and DoJ answer a few simple questions?
Only two "major" parties advocate Constitutionally-limited government: the CP and LP. I hope you're voting for them.
I wasn't saying I should take $10 from you and give it to the democrats, or the skinheads. I was saying that we should all pitch in $10 and make sure that there's a forum that anyone, who can get public support, can use.
My point is that if I have to give $10 to be used for such a forum, and I'm behind 1 of 5 candidates, I am still giving $8 to people I don't support. I'd rather give my $10 to the guy I like, and if the other guys' views aren't good enough to get people (and their money) behind the cause, too bad.
Also, there's still the question of who gets invited to these forums. Do you have any idea how many political parties there are in America? Do we give equal platform to some fringe dude that no one's heard of (Da Vid of the Light Party for instance...bet you've never heard of him) just because he's organized a party? Say he's one of the 5 candidates...why should 20% of our tax money go to support this guy that only.0001% of us are behind? And if you don't include this guy, then his supporters (all 25 of them) are being taxed for something they get no benefit from. That's not right, either.
So I stick by the principle. Do not compel me to support views I disbelieve in, and I will not compel you to support views you disbelieve in.
I hate the democratic welfare state, I think it's self perpetuating and punishes the workers to support the lazy. However, I can see that some welfare truly helps the economy.
I'd prefer to see private charity. I think it would be more efficient, and would more likely go to those who really need it. Those who are just lazy would be told to get off their butts and get a job. Americans are about the most compassionately generous people in the world. I see no reason to force us to be generous through taxation, and then smack us in the face with the fact that the money is going to perpetuate sloth in many cases.
I'm opposed to Bush's faith-based initiative for the same reason. Either some of my money is going to a group with views I wouldn't support myself (which is wrong), or the group is told what they can or can't do by the government (which is wrong). Lose-lose situation.
Ditto for schools. I'd rather see the government removed from schools. Again, because they teach (with public funds) ideas that the parents may not agree with and would not want taught to children. For instance, if teaching of history or politics is slanted favorably toward any one religious viewpoint, it's wrong because it may not be the view the parents believe. If you secularize and avoid any reference of religion in history and politics, kids get the impression that God/religion is unimportant in life, which all devout parents would believe is wrong. Another lose-lose situation. (Add the fact that home-schoolers and private-schoolers are being taxed for services they get no benefit from.)
The best way out of this whole prickly mess is to live by principle. No public funding for things there are different views on. Limit gov't strictly to it's Constitutional functions, like defense.
True, but both the Democratic Republican form of government and the Capitalist form of economy stem from the basic assumption that people should have Liberty. I think that's what the poster was driving at.
First, there is no such thing as "government wealth". Wealth is produced in the private sector. Gov't confiscates it and supposedly uses it for the benefit of the nation (state, community) as a whole. Gov't has no wealth of its own; it is only a drag on the economy.
You didn't give a specific instance in which you would invoke eminent domain. In general, gov't grabbing up private property is socialist. In certain very limited cases I can see justification, because gov't does have some legitimate functions that need resources.
I agree that property shouldn't be run roughshod over, but there is a big difference between
shouldn't and doesn't. The governments of the world can and do it all the time. Hell, government routinely deprives convicted criminals of their lives, confiscating stolen property isn't even blinked at these days.
Just because they do doesn't make it right.
In the case of capital punishment, it's justice. The criminal committed a crime that society feels is justified by death. Whether you agree that capital punishment is ever justified or not is another issue. Seizing someone's property without good justification - the owner has done nothing wrong - is criminal...even if you're the government. The compensation is supposed to be fair, but you can find many cases when it is not.
If the IP owner consents to sell to government, that's an entirely different matter. But then eminent domain need not be invoked. If you don't want to sell and gov't takes it anyway, that's eminent domain at work. It is supposed to compensate you fairly (i.e. market value), but if it's something you didn't want to let go of, is there really a fair compensation?
Part of supporting free speech is supporting the rights of people whose speech offends you.
You are completely wrong. I support your right to free speech. I do not have to support the speech itself. I am free to disagree with it, and should not be compelled to support it.
This way nobody is supporting anyone else's ideas, they're only supporting an open forum in which people can speak.
The TV/newspaper/media is then forced to support them by giving up their resources. That's not right either. If a candidate can provide the means to promote their own message, he should not be prevented from doing so, but he should not be subsidized (at the public expense) in his endeavors either. He has the right to peacefully assemble a rally in a park to speak. He can negotiate a fair price for advertisements in the media. That's fair, and just.
I don't trust parties to keep accurate accounting of the donation receipts. Plus, I'm not sure it's right to require that contributor lists be open. It might be a good way to tell if a candidate was bought-out by special interests. But it might also be a good way for the party in power to find out who disfavors them. It will just lead to equal contributions to all candidates, which is counter-productive.
Proportional representation has some merits. However, regional (districted) representation has some too. While regional representation leaves certain ideologies underrepresented, proportional representation may leave areas unrepresented. I can envision the scenario where all the influential pols live in the capital city to be close to the action, and are out of touch with the rural populace. I think a combination approach would work well. Perhaps half are elected by region, and half are elected by ideology (party). Each party would have a ranked slate of candidates to fill the "at-large" positions. If your party warrants 2 seats, the top two from the slate (that weren't elected from their region, which is a possibility) are selected.
Well I understand your desire not to fund opposing points of view... but simply put... how much would it cost to do so relative the current budget [...]
I'm not willing to sacrifice principle for pragmatism. If the principle is good and sound, it's worth sticking by. I will not steal from others to promote my personal agenda, because I respect their rights.
Funny you say that. History quite clearly tells us that the modern scientific movement sprang from the desire of religious men to understand God's creation and "think God's thoughts after Him". They didn't dispute God's creation at all, they merely sought to figure out how it all worked.
Punctuated equilibrium, heh. That's when the evolutionists said, "Hey, our theory of things gradually changing over millions of years isn't panning out. We aren't finding transitional forms. Let's just modify it a bit so that, for no apparent reason we can describe, the changes happened all at once in bursts. Then we won't look like doofs when we can't find any transitionals." At least that's what it looks like to me. The creationists have their own (simpler) explanation for this: each species was uniquely and wonderfully made that way.
Until we have several thousand years of experimental evidence we won't know if evolution is really correct or not. Maybe by then we'll have seen one of these "punctuations". Until then it's faith either way.
Egads, are you a socialist or something? The government's power of eminent domain is already being abused far too much for the advantage of an elite few. Private property is a fundamental right. Government can not and should not run roughshod over it.
Until we get rid of campaign contributions and begin doing public funding of campaigns
That's about the worst thing that could happen. Who gets this public money? Anybody that throws his hat in the ring, including my neighbor Jim-Bob who's just doing it for the cash? How do you decide who qualifies, and how it's apportioned? If it's based on previous elections, you've just decided to keep incumbent parties in office forever, which is precisely the current problem. What about third parties? What about people (like me) who object to subsidizing views I don't agree with? Or apolitical types who don't want to fund politicians at all? Why should you steal from (tax) them for politicians' gain? Thomas Jefferson said, "To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." Some of us still believe that. If I want to support X's campaign, I will...but I don't expect you to, nor would I force you to. If you want to support his opponent Y, you can go ahead, but don't expect or force me to help you.
(The Constitution and Libertarian parties refuse to accept any government money they qualify for on this principle. Rare to find a candidate that is willing to stand on principles these days.)
What we need is not campaign finance reform but electoral process reform. I should be able to give unlimited support to support the views I agree with. There should be no caps, no spending limits. However, current electoral process favors the incumbent Duopoly and discourages third parties. Why are they called "third" parties? Because plurality voting exposes a false sense of a two-party system! Ever heard of the "wasted vote" problem, or voting for "the lesser of two evils"? We should not have to choose between two evils! Condorcet voting gives every contender a fair chance, because voters' freedom of conscience is preserved.
Changing to the Condorcet method would be the single best thing that could happen to American politics. I don't see reforms like this happening any time soon. The entrenched parties have too much to lose, so they're not likely to make it easier to defeat them. But something must be done.
I don't know why he can't just link to the stories like every other news/discussion site does. Linking clearly doesn't violate copyright. (If you don't want your stuff being seen/linked, don't put it on the web.)
I wonder if it would be any different if he kept a local copy of the story to link to just in case the original site took theirs down. Would it make any difference if he made it available only because the original source no longer did? If that's not legal, caching search engines like Google are in trouble. I realize that's a pretty fine line to walk. After all, if you have a local copy "just in case", how much different is it to just use that to begin with (as long as you're citing the source and giving due credit)? Unless it's not really about fair use of the material but instead lost ad revenue because of decreased traffic to the original...
I've never participated at FR so I don't know how they run things, and I don't know the specifics of this situation. Personally I think the community moderation model for discussion weblogs is better than editorial censorship.
The question remains, can you justify saying "it's the law, get over it" to back up your earlier point.
It's really not hard. In response to your saying, "Most people would consider that an unnacceptable sacrifice," I tried to respond that if it were the law, too bad it's the law and you have to abide by it. Work to change the law if you think it's unacceptable.
Right now if there is a problem, all you can do is go to WIPO, who abides by rules of their own making since they are unelected and not held accountable to anybody's laws, and hope they rule justly. I'm betting they rule in favor of the big guy with the money most often. I'd rather be judged by laws that I know, laws that I can work to change if they're unfair. That is, the laws of my country. There's nothing I can do if I think WIPO is unfair. And that's what sucks about gTLD's.
How sad that most people don't know that Congress' law-making abilities are severely limited. Does anyone read Article 1 8 of the Constitution any more? Education, AIDS research, stem cell research, etc...should not get any federal funding at all.
Federalizing anything is usually a good way to screw it up. The federal gov't is good at a few things, most of which are detailed in Article 1 8 of the Constitution.
er, TBL didn't invent DNS. (These are DOMAIN NAME disputes, not necessarily anything to do with the WWW)
I haven't seen a business sue for rights to a domain name because they wanted to put a Gopher or FTP site at that address. It's always because they want a prominent web site. If there were a different way to access the web site without requiring the domain name, this probably wouldn't be as much of an issue.
Nowhere is there any law which states that domain names must be qualified by a unique legal jurisdiction. [...] Even WIPO is a far more sensible way than what you are suggesting.
I disagree. WIPO is an unelected, unaccountable body. Whose laws do they follow when ruling on disputes? If I am an American, I want American laws to be followed. If I am a German, I want German laws to be respected. The situation of a German company challenging an American domain name holder, well, that just shouldn't happen, because whose laws govern that situation? That's why I suggest that the domain name clearly indicate the nation, at least until we have a one-world government. (Which I hope we never do because it's a bad idea.) Then those nations can adjudicate name disputes according to their own customs and trademark laws.
Yeah, it would help if groups would actually stay in the TLD that best suited them. That's what I meant when I said they shouldn't squat across every namespace.
Still, there are different "areas" for copyright. For instance, Acme Computers does not infringe on Acme Coffee, even thought they have the same name. Both have a legitimate claim to be the.company that "rightfully" gets acme.com. That's why we should move to ccTLD's exclusively, and let nations sort out the rest by their own (copyright) laws.
In legal terms I think the phrase that applies is, "It's the law. Deal with it."
Convenience might have to be sacrificed. TBL never intended URLs to be exposed to users anyway. Remembering that long string is only slightly less clumsy than remembering the IP. But, if your states/districts want their own control and their own subset of laws to apply, then you will have to deal with reduced convenience. If the citizens don't like it, vote in somebody who will change it. Just because the internet is a global network doesn't mean we have to throw out all rules (which are inconvenient) in favor of anarchy (which is convenient...until someone takes your domain name, at which point you wish you had some rules).
Again, this is why the generic TLD's (.com,.net, etc) were a bad idea to from the beginning and should be done away with. We still live in a world with nations that have their own laws. Every domain should have a ccTLD, so the applicable laws apply.
If you register a common word as a domain (beer.com.us) then you can auction it off. Individual countries would be responsible for 2LD management so that McDonald's (the restaurant chain) and McDonald's (the hardware store) could both have their name. You shouldn't be allowed to squat on your name across every namespace when others have a legitimate claim as well.
If you are truly international, register your.int domain, give up rights/claims to any ccTLD domain you have, and agree to settle disputes with WIPO or similar agency.
These stupid domain-name-trademark infringement cases would become drastically more scarce. Seems fair to me.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the average geek here on /. is smart enough to grok the basic physics/mechanics required to build their own phonograph (or equivalent) from basic (I mean really basic) components. If all this goes through, we'll have a new cottage industry starting up.
It's all about information hiding and abstraction. Aunt Tillie shouldn't have to go to a command line to work with files. The files may really be managed that way, but this info doesn't need to be exposed to her. (Maybe the "file" concept isn't even the best one to do the work she wants done.) Of course, the geek should be able to get low-level access if he wants. The ideal system supports both.
Right now Linux is great at twiddling the individual bits that actually operate the computer, but this doesn't relate well to the average person who doesn't understand how a computer really works. They need a simple metaphor that translates how they want to do their work into how to manipulate the computer, and this is why the GUI "desktop" succeeded. KDE and Gnome are getting there. Eazel seemed like a great idea. Desktop success of Linux can happen yet, but I'm not willing to say it's a foregone conclusion.
The stupid part is that the "stuffed" instrument wasn't the only one used to test with. Another instrument indicated that the mirror may be flawed, but it was of lesser precision than the other. They went with the results of the more precise one. Too bad it was screwed up.
I guess this means she'll have to change her slashdot uid, huh?
Congratulations, Rob and Kathleen! Best wishes to you both.
However, one might argue that most of our rights amount to one uber-Right To Be Free From Government Molestation In Our Personal Affairs. That amounts to about the same thing, IMO. If you were aware that gov't was monitoring (for reasons perhaps unknown) and/or recording (for reasons that could change from what you were originally told) what you spoke, where you went, who you talked to, etc, it may cause you to alter your activities. That's a restriction on those primary liberties.
I agree completely. Money is not the problem. The process is the problem.
There's another reason that (senatorial) candidates need huge amounts of money. Primaries serve a necessary function, and it requires cash to perform it. I have no problem with that.
I disagree. First, primaries are an internal function for the parties to determine who that party's candidate will be. It should not be regulated, as it is a private function of a private organization. It's entirely fair for a party to limit participation to its own members, IMO. Second, a "none of the above" option just runs up costs as it necessitates another election. What we need to do is make sure the first election works right, in a fair way, that gives us a winner the majority actually desire. Hint: that's not the plurality vote system.
Now this is completely backwards. Why should there be only two choices? First, if five guys think they're each the best person to be president, let them all run, and give each a fair shot! Arbitrarily limiting the field to two is foolish. A fair voting system would give the third party guy a fair chance of election in the first round, instead of wasting time with a second round. Second, there's nothing wrong with a party deciding "this is our guy". If you're going to subscribe to a party because you believe its ideals, that party should pick the person who best represents those ideals to be its candidate. If you don't agree with the ideals, form your own party. The problem you pointed out (in the 2000 election) earlier was caused precisely because both of the candidates were "moderates". The electorate saw no real distinction between the two, and that's why it came down almost to a coin toss. Third, this is the same reason nobody gets out to vote. Why bother? Both the guys are moderates, and there's no distinction, so it doesn't matter.
The only way to revise the system to change voting so that the results accurately reflect voter preferences. Presently there is a false dichotomy, since your one vote can only reflect your preference between "Candidate A" over "anybody else". Since this type of voting encourages a two-way race, we focus only on the two "leading" candidates.
Voters want real choice. Since 1960, presidential election turnout has been on a steady decline - with one exception: 1992. What happened in 1992? Perot. Like him or not, he was a strong, visible, third-party candidate who made people believe they had a choice. Even though his views garnered 20% of the nation's support, we saw absolutely zero change. Why? Because the system is stacked against change.
Couldn't have said it better myself. In fact, I've been saying this alot lately.
Of course, the best way to limit government is to de-fund it. Without a ridiculously inflated budget, gov't couldn't afford to trample our lives. Why won't the IRS and DoJ answer a few simple questions?
Only two "major" parties advocate Constitutionally-limited government: the CP and LP. I hope you're voting for them.
Another review of the movie for you. One of Sean Penn as well.
My point is that if I have to give $10 to be used for such a forum, and I'm behind 1 of 5 candidates, I am still giving $8 to people I don't support. I'd rather give my $10 to the guy I like, and if the other guys' views aren't good enough to get people (and their money) behind the cause, too bad.
Also, there's still the question of who gets invited to these forums. Do you have any idea how many political parties there are in America? Do we give equal platform to some fringe dude that no one's heard of (Da Vid of the Light Party for instance...bet you've never heard of him) just because he's organized a party? Say he's one of the 5 candidates...why should 20% of our tax money go to support this guy that only .0001% of us are behind? And if you don't include this guy, then his supporters (all 25 of them) are being taxed for something they get no benefit from. That's not right, either.
So I stick by the principle. Do not compel me to support views I disbelieve in, and I will not compel you to support views you disbelieve in.
I'd prefer to see private charity. I think it would be more efficient, and would more likely go to those who really need it. Those who are just lazy would be told to get off their butts and get a job. Americans are about the most compassionately generous people in the world. I see no reason to force us to be generous through taxation, and then smack us in the face with the fact that the money is going to perpetuate sloth in many cases.
I'm opposed to Bush's faith-based initiative for the same reason. Either some of my money is going to a group with views I wouldn't support myself (which is wrong), or the group is told what they can or can't do by the government (which is wrong). Lose-lose situation.
Ditto for schools. I'd rather see the government removed from schools. Again, because they teach (with public funds) ideas that the parents may not agree with and would not want taught to children. For instance, if teaching of history or politics is slanted favorably toward any one religious viewpoint, it's wrong because it may not be the view the parents believe. If you secularize and avoid any reference of religion in history and politics, kids get the impression that God/religion is unimportant in life, which all devout parents would believe is wrong. Another lose-lose situation. (Add the fact that home-schoolers and private-schoolers are being taxed for services they get no benefit from.)
The best way out of this whole prickly mess is to live by principle. No public funding for things there are different views on. Limit gov't strictly to it's Constitutional functions, like defense.
True, but both the Democratic Republican form of government and the Capitalist form of economy stem from the basic assumption that people should have Liberty. I think that's what the poster was driving at.
First, there is no such thing as "government wealth". Wealth is produced in the private sector. Gov't confiscates it and supposedly uses it for the benefit of the nation (state, community) as a whole. Gov't has no wealth of its own; it is only a drag on the economy.
You didn't give a specific instance in which you would invoke eminent domain. In general, gov't grabbing up private property is socialist. In certain very limited cases I can see justification, because gov't does have some legitimate functions that need resources.
Just because they do doesn't make it right.
In the case of capital punishment, it's justice. The criminal committed a crime that society feels is justified by death. Whether you agree that capital punishment is ever justified or not is another issue. Seizing someone's property without good justification - the owner has done nothing wrong - is criminal...even if you're the government. The compensation is supposed to be fair, but you can find many cases when it is not.
If the IP owner consents to sell to government, that's an entirely different matter. But then eminent domain need not be invoked. If you don't want to sell and gov't takes it anyway, that's eminent domain at work. It is supposed to compensate you fairly (i.e. market value), but if it's something you didn't want to let go of, is there really a fair compensation?
You are completely wrong. I support your right to free speech. I do not have to support the speech itself. I am free to disagree with it, and should not be compelled to support it.
The TV/newspaper/media is then forced to support them by giving up their resources. That's not right either. If a candidate can provide the means to promote their own message, he should not be prevented from doing so, but he should not be subsidized (at the public expense) in his endeavors either. He has the right to peacefully assemble a rally in a park to speak. He can negotiate a fair price for advertisements in the media. That's fair, and just.
I don't trust parties to keep accurate accounting of the donation receipts. Plus, I'm not sure it's right to require that contributor lists be open. It might be a good way to tell if a candidate was bought-out by special interests. But it might also be a good way for the party in power to find out who disfavors them. It will just lead to equal contributions to all candidates, which is counter-productive.
Proportional representation has some merits. However, regional (districted) representation has some too. While regional representation leaves certain ideologies underrepresented, proportional representation may leave areas unrepresented. I can envision the scenario where all the influential pols live in the capital city to be close to the action, and are out of touch with the rural populace. I think a combination approach would work well. Perhaps half are elected by region, and half are elected by ideology (party). Each party would have a ranked slate of candidates to fill the "at-large" positions. If your party warrants 2 seats, the top two from the slate (that weren't elected from their region, which is a possibility) are selected.
I'm not willing to sacrifice principle for pragmatism. If the principle is good and sound, it's worth sticking by. I will not steal from others to promote my personal agenda, because I respect their rights.
Funny you say that. History quite clearly tells us that the modern scientific movement sprang from the desire of religious men to understand God's creation and "think God's thoughts after Him". They didn't dispute God's creation at all, they merely sought to figure out how it all worked.
Punctuated equilibrium, heh. That's when the evolutionists said, "Hey, our theory of things gradually changing over millions of years isn't panning out. We aren't finding transitional forms. Let's just modify it a bit so that, for no apparent reason we can describe, the changes happened all at once in bursts. Then we won't look like doofs when we can't find any transitionals." At least that's what it looks like to me. The creationists have their own (simpler) explanation for this: each species was uniquely and wonderfully made that way.
Until we have several thousand years of experimental evidence we won't know if evolution is really correct or not. Maybe by then we'll have seen one of these "punctuations". Until then it's faith either way.
Egads, are you a socialist or something? The government's power of eminent domain is already being abused far too much for the advantage of an elite few. Private property is a fundamental right. Government can not and should not run roughshod over it.
That's about the worst thing that could happen. Who gets this public money? Anybody that throws his hat in the ring, including my neighbor Jim-Bob who's just doing it for the cash? How do you decide who qualifies, and how it's apportioned? If it's based on previous elections, you've just decided to keep incumbent parties in office forever, which is precisely the current problem. What about third parties? What about people (like me) who object to subsidizing views I don't agree with? Or apolitical types who don't want to fund politicians at all? Why should you steal from (tax) them for politicians' gain? Thomas Jefferson said, "To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." Some of us still believe that. If I want to support X's campaign, I will...but I don't expect you to, nor would I force you to. If you want to support his opponent Y, you can go ahead, but don't expect or force me to help you.
(The Constitution and Libertarian parties refuse to accept any government money they qualify for on this principle. Rare to find a candidate that is willing to stand on principles these days.)
What we need is not campaign finance reform but electoral process reform. I should be able to give unlimited support to support the views I agree with. There should be no caps, no spending limits. However, current electoral process favors the incumbent Duopoly and discourages third parties. Why are they called "third" parties? Because plurality voting exposes a false sense of a two-party system! Ever heard of the "wasted vote" problem, or voting for "the lesser of two evils"? We should not have to choose between two evils! Condorcet voting gives every contender a fair chance, because voters' freedom of conscience is preserved.
Changing to the Condorcet method would be the single best thing that could happen to American politics. I don't see reforms like this happening any time soon. The entrenched parties have too much to lose, so they're not likely to make it easier to defeat them. But something must be done.
I don't know why he can't just link to the stories like every other news/discussion site does. Linking clearly doesn't violate copyright. (If you don't want your stuff being seen/linked, don't put it on the web.)
I wonder if it would be any different if he kept a local copy of the story to link to just in case the original site took theirs down. Would it make any difference if he made it available only because the original source no longer did? If that's not legal, caching search engines like Google are in trouble. I realize that's a pretty fine line to walk. After all, if you have a local copy "just in case", how much different is it to just use that to begin with (as long as you're citing the source and giving due credit)? Unless it's not really about fair use of the material but instead lost ad revenue because of decreased traffic to the original...
I've never participated at FR so I don't know how they run things, and I don't know the specifics of this situation. Personally I think the community moderation model for discussion weblogs is better than editorial censorship.
It's really not hard. In response to your saying, "Most people would consider that an unnacceptable sacrifice," I tried to respond that if it were the law, too bad it's the law and you have to abide by it. Work to change the law if you think it's unacceptable.
Right now if there is a problem, all you can do is go to WIPO, who abides by rules of their own making since they are unelected and not held accountable to anybody's laws, and hope they rule justly. I'm betting they rule in favor of the big guy with the money most often. I'd rather be judged by laws that I know, laws that I can work to change if they're unfair. That is, the laws of my country. There's nothing I can do if I think WIPO is unfair. And that's what sucks about gTLD's.
How sad that most people don't know that Congress' law-making abilities are severely limited. Does anyone read Article 1 8 of the Constitution any more? Education, AIDS research, stem cell research, etc...should not get any federal funding at all.
Federalizing anything is usually a good way to screw it up. The federal gov't is good at a few things, most of which are detailed in Article 1 8 of the Constitution.
I haven't seen a business sue for rights to a domain name because they wanted to put a Gopher or FTP site at that address. It's always because they want a prominent web site. If there were a different way to access the web site without requiring the domain name, this probably wouldn't be as much of an issue.
I disagree. WIPO is an unelected, unaccountable body. Whose laws do they follow when ruling on disputes? If I am an American, I want American laws to be followed. If I am a German, I want German laws to be respected. The situation of a German company challenging an American domain name holder, well, that just shouldn't happen, because whose laws govern that situation? That's why I suggest that the domain name clearly indicate the nation, at least until we have a one-world government. (Which I hope we never do because it's a bad idea.) Then those nations can adjudicate name disputes according to their own customs and trademark laws.
Yeah, it would help if groups would actually stay in the TLD that best suited them. That's what I meant when I said they shouldn't squat across every namespace.
Still, there are different "areas" for copyright. For instance, Acme Computers does not infringe on Acme Coffee, even thought they have the same name. Both have a legitimate claim to be the .company that "rightfully" gets acme.com. That's why we should move to ccTLD's exclusively, and let nations sort out the rest by their own (copyright) laws.
In legal terms I think the phrase that applies is, "It's the law. Deal with it."
Convenience might have to be sacrificed. TBL never intended URLs to be exposed to users anyway. Remembering that long string is only slightly less clumsy than remembering the IP. But, if your states/districts want their own control and their own subset of laws to apply, then you will have to deal with reduced convenience. If the citizens don't like it, vote in somebody who will change it. Just because the internet is a global network doesn't mean we have to throw out all rules (which are inconvenient) in favor of anarchy (which is convenient...until someone takes your domain name, at which point you wish you had some rules).
Again, this is why the generic TLD's (.com, .net, etc) were a bad idea to from the beginning and should be done away with. We still live in a world with nations that have their own laws. Every domain should have a ccTLD, so the applicable laws apply.
If you register a common word as a domain (beer.com.us) then you can auction it off. Individual countries would be responsible for 2LD management so that McDonald's (the restaurant chain) and McDonald's (the hardware store) could both have their name. You shouldn't be allowed to squat on your name across every namespace when others have a legitimate claim as well.
If you are truly international, register your .int domain, give up rights/claims to any ccTLD domain you have, and agree to settle disputes with WIPO or similar agency.
These stupid domain-name-trademark infringement cases would become drastically more scarce. Seems fair to me.